>I'm old, retired, and watching "Love Crazy".
Oh, I thought it was because you're a journalist and you know how to waste time better than anyone, yet sincerely consider it "research". Also, I don't believe journalists ever retire, for they are chronically and incurably curious.
Only someone who's loves a journalist would risk that assessment...

Winter Solstice yesterday.
Now the earth will rise from it's darkened slumber. From the _Christmas Revels_,
*Sussex Mummer's Carol* :
*Masters In This Hall* :
*Abbots Bromley Horn Dance*:
Not the best video/sound, but the most accurate version of the English/Welsh/Manx dance for Winter Solstice.
h4. May the Sacred, the mystical, and the magical, combine to this Blessed time of year!
Edited by: Singleton on Dec 22, 2009 9:50 AM

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> Was that some reference to my hair color? You had to play the blonde card, didn't you? And in this thread, too.
>
> Well, Gentlemen (and I use the word loosely) may prefer blondes but they marry brunettes.
h4. Gentleman prefer anything with a young body and pretty face,
If the equipment's right, they take out for a spin.
After a certain age, many women are blond with brunette roots- 'cuz the brunette is no longer brunette ;-)
Has the beautiful Jennifer Jones (brunette) been mentioned yet?

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> I have to disagree about Allen's motives at the end, but it's a small thing to disagree about. I actually admired Allen's restraint in dealing with Singleton's situation.... yes, in that one scene, I had my doubts about how he would react, whether his motives were selfish or not, but in the end, I felt that he came to his senses and really wanted what was best for Victoria/Singleton. He admirably placed his own wishes on hold to help her find herself, without pushing or holding her back.... well, maybe a little holding back, but you can't blame him for being human.
I have a slightly different take. I was reading up on Ayn Rand. She really abhorred the screenwriting that wasn't her own. Love Letters is not her concept. She promoted ethical egoism-- _do it for yourself, and the world will be a better place for putting yourself first_. She thought people who promoted altruism would end up destroying the individual and through that, society. I kid you not. I keep thinking that the Producers helped "write" this storyline. It doesn't follow Ayn's "reasoning" at all.
All through the movie, Allen must decide to keep honesty out of the relationship. The relationship started with dishonesty; Allen is pretending to be Roger. But is he really? At the first conversation, we learn Allen doesn't want to continue, but Roger wants him to write one more. Allen learns Victoria is loving him through the letters. I don't know for certain how Allen feels in this first scene, but we know how he feels by the time he recovers in Hospital -- he has also fallen in love. I do like the way it is carried off. Even if Ayn Rand didn't believe it herself.
> This genre - the ghostly romantic mystery noir, only appeared for about 4-5 years at most, and it is one of my very favorite types of film. Films like Love Letters, Laura, The Enchanted Cottage, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Portrait of Jennie seem to me to be a direct result of World War II. The general public (and Hollywood screenwriters) were dealing with some very heavy issues - life and death, disfigurement, love and the need for it to last after death, whether 2 people can still love when they are broken up inside, whether a person can feel the same way about people after having gone through a traumatic event, etc.
>
> Oh, maybe the romantic in me would have liked little more suffering at his situation with Singleton in the second half, but on the whole, Cotten was romantic without ever being cloying, and he used an extremely simple technique for his line readings, which was very effective. Where other actors might have dwelt lingeringly on a painful line, Cotten went for the straightforward approach, leaving the heavy duty acting in the second half of the movie to Jennifer Jones. As Allen left Singleton free to find her memory on her own, Cotten left Jones free to take the film to another level. I have to admire that, having known so many actors who would have tried to make the film about their own yearning. Cotten walked a tightrope with this role, a little too much here or there could have destroyed the romantic feeling of the film. Give and take is right, Maven.
>CineMaven wrote:
>I really liked what you wrote here. Now that you mention it...Cotten was very chivalrous to allow his leading ladies free rein. And the tightrope you wrote about...yes, yes! Too many performances fail by actors not hitting the right note. One needs a strong director too.
I concur. Cotten has to carry much brooding, on the hospital grounds, at his parent's home, and in his Aunt's home. When he's at Dilly's party, he becomes drunk and cynical, and it feels very much a natural turn to his character. Then, the guilt has to evolve in the newspaper office. Through it all, Allen is quite stoic, and his character is a perfect balance to our light Singleton when we meet her. I agree with Cotton's playing of his Allen to JJ's discordance with herself in the second half. It is like a dance how they play off the changes.

Coincidences? I don't discount them at all! I've had too many already. I believe in fate and the Laws of Attraction. The world is more than we know. I thought it had the six degrees about it, a friend of a friend of a friend.
I have walked in a airport, walking toward a person that was my best friend -- twenty-five years ago in High School. She was "just thinking about me" -the day before.
I totally buy the connection in Love Letters. It's incredible when it happens to you.

Hello, all!
Okay, so I have spent the last several hours!! reading the thread (I try to stay away from movie rambles for this reason--takes so long to get caught up) and I think you guys have got it nailed!
I think JJ is the perfect choice for Singleton because of her natural ethereal expressions, and even when she is Victoria, I see her as naive, with an almost teen-aged innocence about her. That works very well for her obsession about the letters. Who wouldn't get moony about those letters. CineMaven, I've tried to write those letters too. I've decided only the seriously in love should try it.
Ayn Rand is the most perplexing part of this whole production. Here was a woman not at all like the characters should wrote about. Not one wit!
Ayn had numerous affairs throughout her marriage, she claimed always out in the open, and she was always in the driver's seat about who her lovers could be associating with too. Objectivism is what she coined her philosophy, and it shares nothing with Singleton, Allen Quinton, or even Dilly, but bizarrely a little with Roger Moreland.
The thing about Love Letters that always intrigued me about the story is how the WAR, the SECOND WORLD WAR, just sort of disappears in the story...
I must get back to the back-reading. What do you think of Gladys Cooper's closing statement,
*A lie never works, no matter what our motives.*

Aimee. Wow.
I am working on a sp with reference to models who look like her. Thank you for the video. I didn't know if I could get the right image for the Drugstore beauty counter scene.
I do appreciate this thread so much. Thanks Jake.
Norah Jones.. love this, especially what looks like an eight track tape she's using in the beginning: